Fifty-five years old, cleaning other people’s houses since nineteen, and able to read me from across a room.

The next morning the pollen lay in a yellow film over every car in the Freedom Park lot.

I found Spencer on a bench beneath the big oak by the duck pond, his hands folded and his ankles crossed like a man waiting on a bus he wouldn’t mind missing.

He got to his feet as soon as he spotted me.

“Thanks for coming.